Federal appeals court blasts Texas in MR case

From The Associated Press July 2:

HOUSTON — A federal appeals court in New Orleans ordered a hearing for a death row inmate who may be mentally retarded and ineligible for the death penalty, and it criticized Texas courts for refusing to hold such a hearing.

A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blistered the trial court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for relying on written arguments rather than holding a hearing in the case of Michael Wayne Hall, who has been sentenced to die for killing Amy Robinson in 1998. The 19-year-old was abducted while riding her bike to work in Arlington, tortured and killed.

The judges faulted the Court of Criminal Appeals for "clearly erroneous findings ... which, if addressed in an evidentiary hearing, might have highlighted the unreasonableness of the state court's determination of the facts."

"The facts before us are a core manifestation of a case where the state failed to provide a full and fair hearing and where such a hearing would bring out facts which, if proven true, support ... relief," the panel of the New Orleans-based court said.

In its ruling late Monday, the appeals court ordered a federal evidentiary hearing and reversed the findings of a federal district judge who upheld the state courts' rejection of Hall's claims that he has mental retardation.

"The life or death of a defendant, determined without hearing cross examination to resolve disputed material facts, here violates the core principles of due process and Hall's right of confrontation," Judge Patrick Higginbotham wrote in his own concurring opinion and dissent. He said Hall, 29, was denied "minimal due process."

Rather than merely order a hearing, Higginbotham said in his dissent that he thought the state should be ordered to hold a hearing within 120 days. Failure to do so should negate Hall's death sentence, the appeals court judge said.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that people with mental retardation may not be executed.